Opening Space "in house"

[Herrmann, Thomas]

You wrote (Jimbo)
> 1.  I am curious about how people have used Open Space in their own
> companies...Are there those on the list
> serve that are using OS in their own company, and how do they find the
> balance between the role of facilitator and the role of employee.

Hi!
I have used OS within my organization during 1999 and I have considered the
question you pose. During the autumn 1998 I organized two events contracting
Ingrid Olausson (consultant).  After attaining training I facilitated about
ten events last year (various themes). About half of them where only for
employees from the labour market board/Employment-centres which consists of
a total of 1800 employees. The rest had attandandees from several
organizations. I have been thinking about some issues. Firstly there might
be a risk because there is no cost involved (to hire a consultant), even
though there are many other costs involved I think people think more before
they hire external consultants. Secondly I noticed that there where
sometimes expectations that I should take more responsability for the
practical preparations than I intended to. Important to clarify who should
do what!  Thirdly I did have to use evenings and weekends for planning and
preparations
since I had a too packed schedule daytime.
I found it sometimes hard to decide how to do the introduction when
some persons had attended several OS's and some experienced it for the first
time. Especially when on one occassion only a few exceptions had not
attended before. Me and my collegue talked about it and realized that it
won´t harm to hear similair words again, I'm sure they didn't even
recognize. We did change our way a bit though.
Due to several reasons the space was closed for me to further develop OS
within
my organization. Partly because it did take too much time from my other
tasks.
Since a few weeks I'm on my own (full-time consultant) and I will probably
have quite a few OS for the labour market board. The number of employees
will have to drop by 25%(times are changing) the coming years due to a cut
in the governmental
fundings. This will imply a resconstruction of the 85 workingplaces in our
county. It seems OS will have a great part in this hence the possibility is
quite good that the outcome may be interesting and exhilirating! I'll let
you know what happens. Next month I look forward to training with Harisson
in Stockholm!
Greetings Thomas Herrmann, Kungsbacka Sweden